


Castle On The Hill

by thegirlnamedcove



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alive Hale Family, Alive Laura Hale, Gen, Hale Family Feels, Hale House, Magical Stiles Stilinski, Mentioned Kate Argent, Resurrection, Scott McCall is a Good Alpha, Slow Burn, but close, but slow burn so be aware, kate can go choke, not exactly a fix-it, sterek is endgame
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-18
Updated: 2017-08-28
Packaged: 2018-12-17 00:47:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,742
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11840484
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thegirlnamedcove/pseuds/thegirlnamedcove
Summary: “I figured it out!” Stiles skidded into the loft at ten at night, all noise and kinetic energy. Derek was parked in an armchair up against the picture window, a book in his lap, and irritation growing by the second.“What?”“Magic. I figured it out. Well, some of it, the important parts, hey how opposed are you to bloodletting?”He sighed and snapped his book shut, rising from the chair to head Stiles off before he started poking around trying to find Derek’s knives.“Moderate to very.  What did you figure out?”“Derek. I can bring them back. The Hales, your family, I can bring all of them back.”





	1. Bloodletting

**Author's Note:**

> READ BEFORE ENTERING:
> 
> The first two chapters are the fic. It was basically complete but then I was like, "No, I'm a good writer. There's so much more I want to do in this story, I'll just add chapters every couple weeks and make it up as I go along. Explore."
> 
> That did not happen. I wrote exactly one additional chapter, then totally abandoned it for months. It agitates me every time I look at it in my works tab. So I'm marking it complete and putting this warning here. The first two chapters are the fic, that's the ending. The third chapter is open ended nonsense, but just consider it, like, bonus material. DVD extras, ya dig?
> 
> Ed Sheeran is responsible for all of the feelings contained herein.

“I figured it out!” Stiles skidded into the loft at ten at night, all noise and kinetic energy. Derek was parked in an armchair up against the picture window, a book in his lap, and irritation growing by the second.

“What?”

“Magic. I figured it out. Well, some of it, the important parts, hey how opposed are you to bloodletting?”

He sighed and snapped his book shut, rising from the chair to head Stiles off before he started poking around trying to find Derek’s knives.

“Moderate to very.  What did you figure out?”

Stiles was practically vibrating, but for once he didn’t smell like Adderall. He didn’t smell like anything, actually, not even coffee. Just regular adrenaline and cortisol and dopamine. He was more excited than Derek had ever seen him, but nervous too, his face flitting between pleased and a little bit sick.

“It’ll be complicated, I’ll have to pull a lot of energy and I’m not totally sure I can hold it all myself, but I’ve been reading so many different books, and I feel like no one ever cross references this stuff because how do we miss things like this, I mean it’s just sloppy not to compare texts--”

“Stiles!” he snapped his fingers in front of the kid’s face and smirked at the affronted scowl that popped up. It wasn’t on his face long.

“Derek. I can bring them back. The Hales, your family, I can bring all of them back.”

 

***

 

It was two in the morning by the time they finished going through all of the steps Stiles had mapped out. He smelled now, of caffeine and whiskey, and Derek was sure he stank just just as strongly of aconite and hard cider. They’d decided, after the first hour, that it was too hard a conversation to have sober.

“I don’t...I’m not an expert. And we should maybe run this by someone who is just in case we missed out on something vital,” Stiles smoothed his hands over the papers he had scattered across the table, “but it would work, right? I’m not jumping the gun here, this would work.”

Derek tried a couple of times to speak but his throat was rough from fighting back his emotions all night. There was a weather chart right in front of him, dozens of numbers all laid out in a grid, and they swam before his eyes. Finally he cleared his throat enough and tried again.

“I think so.”

Stiles reached across the space between them and took his hand.

“When can we...what will we need to do first?”

“Well,” Stiles squeezed his fingers, “we would need to demolish the Hale house. That’s going to be the step that takes the longest, we need as much of that dirt underneath as we can manage, and a flat working space.”

Derek nodded, “Okay. I can call someone tomorrow.”

“We should call the pack too. As much as I don’t want to face Scott’s judging eyes we really should involve our dearly beloved Alpha.”

“Yours, not mine.”

“Keep telling yourself that,” Stiles smiled, “Derek…..if we do this….when they come back, are you going to be ready for that?”

Derek sighed, and deflated in his chair. The idea of seeing Laura again was terrifying, but the prospect of seeing his mother? His father? Peter’s wife, his cousin Milo? It felt paralyzing, a combination of terror and joy so intense he could hardly draw a distinction between the two emotions.

”No. Probably not. But we should do it anyway.”

Stiles nodded once, and pulled a map of the city with ley lines penciled in closer to him.

 

***

 

Demolishing the house proved an even bigger feat than they anticipated. The foundation went deep into the soil, and the pipes and wires that connected to the main drag were extensive. If they ever planned to rebuild it was in their best interest to preserve the utilities, and Derek wanted to give his family that. A new pack house, where they could all live together again. But they needed that dirt, it was as close to grave dirt as any of the dead Hales ever received, and sacrifices needed to be made.

In the end, Derek dug out the basement by hand, preserving the soil and ash and scraping all the way down to the concrete foundation. Then, once Stiles had nodded his okay, he’d taken off his shoes and walked into the woods. Lacking anywhere more secure and spacious they stored the grave dirt in buckets against one wall of his loft, and when he returned after a week away he couldn’t even look at it. He spent three days keeping his gaze carefully averted, and then Isaac caught him looking at condo listings nearby when he couldn’t manage anymore.

While he was at work they moved the buckets to a storage unit a block away.

After that the preparations went much faster. They collected what little belongings Derek had for each family member, gathered as much salt as nine people with four Costco memberships between them could manage, and as many pomegranates as California in November had to offer. They skimmed the rivers in the preserve for algae, and killed a few crows for their beaks. They built an effigy of Kate and burned it in place of her body to set right the scales of the universe and avenge the deaths she’d caused. That event had been cathartic for Derek in ways he couldn’t ever explain to a therapist, a feeling of justice and vicious glee filling him as he watched her constructed face burn, all tied up in rope and false limbs pinned dwon. He told Stiles about it later, in stilted, awkward fragments, and in his beautiful way he empathized. They agreed, albeit loosely, to burn an effigy of dementia at a later date.

By Thanksgiving they were seventy five percent of the way to ready. By Christmas the only thing left to do was perform the spell. It still took until New Years before Derek could face it.

 

***

 

The pack stood in a  circle around the now smooth ground where the previous house once stood. A new house was ready just two hundred feet to the west, the siding still unfinished and stacked under a tarp in the backyard, but fit to live in, with ten bedrooms and a sprawling layout. The grave dirt and personal effects were scattered all over the property in strange looking patterns. Stiles had been tracking a storm all week, hoping it would wait to come to fruition and unleash its kinetic energy until it was over Beacon Hills, and it was finally here. He was crouched in the center of the circle, his hand on the ground and his feet splayed wide, a deep humming coming from his throat just as much as it came from the air around them.

Lightning tore the sky in half above them.

Stiles pulled from the depths of the earth a well of power, energy as deep and rich as coffee, and he poured out a flask of wine in return. It was fortified with iron and mixed in with pitch, and Derek lamented the process it had taken to create just to end up wetting the dirt, but he knew Stiles knew what he was doing. His hair seemed to stand on end from electrostatic charge.

He threw a hand out towards Boyd and a line of what looked like magma traced through the open air to Boyd’s chest. He contorted under the pressure of it, but never let go of the people holding his hands. It glowed white hot in his chest and then dissipated into the other people in the circle, eventually simmering down to a gentle glow under each person’s ribs. Stiles stood and raised both hands to the sky, tipping his head back and taking in a lungfull of charged air. He drew down energy from the storm, pulling as much as it was possible for his body to hold at one time, and threw another hand out towards Scott who caught the force in his chest much the same. It distributed throughout the pack and then settled, the glow that much brighter now. Derek could feel it humming under his skin like a live wire was being pressed to his pulse point and he fought the urge to shake himself out of the others’ grasp.

After the earth and the storm Stiles laid a hand on the amulet around his neck. The sigil on it shone even in the low light and pulsed in time with a heartbeat Derek couldn’t hear over the noise of the thunder. Seeming satisfied, Stiles dropped his hand and reached for the fruit and salt mixture to rub into the earth below him, beginning a chant he had created himself in Gaelic and sketching out Futhark runes on the forest floor. He was asking the gods for mercy, for forbearance, for gifts in exchange for worship. Derek knew, from past meetings and endless late night study sessions, that doing this meant he would become a devotee of at least three different deities. He was going to have to construct an honest to god temple if he didn’t want the forces that be to renege on their deal and the pack would have to stock it with all kinds of offerings. He was okay with that trade. Still, it chilled him to hear the names as Stiles spoke them, “Hecate, Persephone, Tartarus”.

Then Stiles stepped forward, towards him, and produced from his pocket a switchblade he had obtained through dubious means. He held the hilt of it over Derek’s heart and searched his face for one last final sign of consent. When Derek nodded he hit the button on the side and the blade shot out, piercing between the fourth and fifth rib, and he gasped a useless breath against the pain. Blood flowed out from where Stiles had gotten a main ventricle and he pressed a crescent shaped bowl against Derek’s side to collect as much as he could.

When he was satisfied and Derek was finally beginning to heal he stepped back, blood as dark as the iron wine that came before it, and added the algae and a few ounces of alcohol to the mix. He knelt down, dug a quick hole, and then offered this to the earth as well. Above them, the storm seemed to reach an apex of some kind and Stiles quickly stood and pulled the energy back from where the pack had been storing it among them, acting as a conduit to direct it into the earth where the Hale house once stood, and his scream at the intensity filled the sky.

When the energy was all expended, and the storm cleared away, fight gone out of it, Stiles lay on the ground in a heap. Around him lay eleven bodies, naked but alive, and though Derek’s head was throbbing with the energy that had been directed through him and his side ached so intensely he could hardly focus, he could hear eleven new heartbeats that weren’t there before.

A head rose as someone struggled to right themselves, and a dark head of hair turned towards him. His mother’s face, puzzled but unmarked by time, stared back at him.


	2. Omegas

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Remember how I said I would post yesterday? Well, I'm a liar and we left a day early for vacation. So...driving.

Some of the Hales did not agree with what Stiles and Derek had done.

“Nothing comes without a price, Derek,” his mother said. She was clad, as they all were, in cheap scrubs misappropriated from the hospital, but it did nothing to reign in the power she exuded when she spoke. Even without her alpha powers she was an alpha, and always would be.

“I know,” Stiles cut in, “and we paid a price. But everyone just assumes the price is all biblical, a life for a life, when really it’s about energy. You pay in what you get out. We stole the energy from a storm that would have levelled a few buildings in order to bring you back, Missus Hale, and we asked some very powerful entities very nicely if we could have the energy from a few would-be volcanic eruptions. It wasn’t cheap, is all I’m saying.”

He lifted a hand in supplication.

She narrowed her eyes at him and then cut them back at Derek.

“Who has the alpha spark right now? Who approved this decision?”

Derek had been scarcely able to speak all day, too overcome with emotion at seeing these people who he loved walking and talking outside of a dream, but he managed a few words now.

“Laura had it after you. Then Peter. Then me. Then I gave it up to save Cora’s life. It’s gone, mom.”

She scoffed, “It’s never gone.”

Stiles shrugged.

“Well, not sure what to tell you there Missus H. No one suddenly popped up with alpha powers after Derek gave it up. We’re all a part of Scott’s pack now--Scott McCall, he’s a true alpha--but it’s been that way for much longer than your idea of alpha powers would account for.”

Derek could feel the tension in the air, could smell it too, and saw it in the way his father Eric laid a hand on Talia’s in an attempt to calm her down. She hummed to herself and then straightened, squaring her shoulders and seemingly coming to a decision.

“And which of you is Scott McCall?”

“Me, ma’am,” Scott raised a hand.

“And my son is in your pack?”

“Well,” Scott ran a hand along the scruff at his neck, “Not exactly. He finds it hard to...trust...after everything that’s happened to him, and I can’t blame him really. But he’s welcome in my pack any time.”

Talia Hale nodded, although Derek caught the glance at him that meant they’d be having a stern conversation as soon as they were alone. God, he wanted to weep at the knowledge that a stern talking-to from his mother was possible again.

“Well then, regardless of my son’s status, we’d like to petition to be a part of your pack as well. I know and understand the issues with integrating even one new wolf into an existing dynamic, let alone ten of us--”

“Eleven,” Derek offered, his voice still soft and rough from tears.

“Yes, eleven,” Talia’s voice softened in response, just for a moment, before hardening back to it’s standard cadence, “Eleven wolves will be a big change. But I hope you will consider us.”

Scott chuckled and tucked his head down, seemingly placid and submissive in the face of what was effectively an omega and her family.

“We knew when we performed the ritual that you’d be joining us, and we planned for it. I’m sure you’re more accustomed to pomp and circumstance but as far as I and my pack are concerned: welcome to the family.”

He offered a hand to shake and after a few nervous looks around the clearing she took it.

 

***

 

Peter was perhaps the most affected by the whole incident, and Derek could see it in the way his face shifted from soft to angry to tremulous and crying as he held his little boy Milo for the first time in six years. Milo hadn’t aged a day from when he’d been killed and neither had Peter’s wife Angela. They just stood, Milo in front of him and Angela at his back, and existed and that was enough to have Peter close to breaking down. He didn’t say much, except to whisper, “I avenged you both.” Angela kissed his temple at that and whispered back, “I always knew you would.” Milo smiled and rand his small hands along his father’s fangs where they had dropped, and Peter cried for the first time Derek had ever seen.

Laura was there, too, and she slung an arm around Derek’s shoulder, an easy grin on her face.

“I won’t say I expected this, babyface, but I gotta say,” she gestured at Stiles, “I’m pretty pleased with the outcome.”

He quirked an eyebrow at her but couldn’t keep the smile off his face.

“You’re pleased to have died and been resurrected?” he asked.

“No. I’m pleased that you found yourself an adorable magical boyfriend who can grant you all your heart’s deepest desires.”

“He’s not my boyfriend,” Derek offered automatically.

“Well if he isn’t, get on that,” Laura smiled, “or I will. God knows I have a lot to thank him for. He even brought back  _ Grandma Mera _ . She’s been dead for forty years”

Isaac smirked and leaned into Stiles, whispering something into his ear that had the man catching Derek’s eye and just staring. He couldn’t hear what it was from way across the clearing but he could guess that it was a summary of his chat with Laura. He cringed internally and tried to keep his face void of any emotion.

“Well! It’s late and I imagine most of you are tired,” he announced, “We do have a place for all of you to stay in the new Hale house if you want to follow Isaac. That’s the guy with curly hair in the bright yellow jersey. We have plenty of time to hash out the details of you all being back. All the time in the world, in fact.”

“Alright,” Talia said, “double file, with your buddy, and when we get to the house we can convene in the kitchen.”

The Hales lined up as practiced and Derek remembered long weekends spent moving from stall to stall in the farmer’s market in tight formations, all his mother’s idea and based on a blog about efficiency she had devoured when her kids were first born and constantly underfoot. He smiled to himself but hung back and didn’t join in. Laura, his buddy of twenty years, shot him a puzzled look but then caught sight of Stiles and just smirked in his direction before walking off. Derek pulled him aside at the trailhead with a hand on his arm.

“Thank you,” he said, voice low and mostly breath, “You didn’t have to do this for me and you did it anyway. I know it hurt you. So thanks.”

Stiles smiled, broad and wide, although his eyes betrayed the exhaustion clinging to his bones.

“No problems, there, Sourwolf. What happened to them was a cosmic tragedy and they deserved to come back, whether or not I had a personal stake in making things right for you. We should make sure to dig up Kate’s body in the next few days, just to be sure it’s in enough pieces that this spell won’t have some residual effect, but all in all I think I used my powers for good this time.”

Derek smirked, his satisfaction overriding any nausea he would have normally felt at the mention of her name.

“We can only hope you continue in the same vein in the future. Batman always did seem more amoral than Superman in the comics.”

“Hey!” Stiles squawked, “I will have you know I am perfectly moral! For a given value of moral.”

Derek kept his smirk and strode off into the woods, knowing that Stiles would be at his heels and his mother and family ahead of him. He felt safe in these woods for the first time in years.


	3. Healed Skin

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is mainly transitional, but it was fun to write. If I'm not careful I could just dick around with this pack, like, going to the dentist and talking to their neighbors and other banal shit forever and ever and never move on to other projects. Assuming I restrain myself, it's looking like this story will be maybe 6 or 7 chapters total.
> 
> [AS WE ALL NOW KNOW, I DID NOT RESTRAIN MYSELF, AND TOTALLY BURNED OUT. SORRY. COMMENCE DVD EXTRAS.]

“You did _what?_ ” Talia’s eyes burned with an intensity far beyond their yellow hue. A week had passed since they’d all been brought back, and the details of the past decade were being shared, slowly, in pieces.

Across the breakfast table, Peter quailed and stared resolutely at his bowl of granola. Angela looped an arm around his shoulders.

“It’s not an excuse,” he offered, “but I was crazed for much of the time after the fire.”

Talia scoffed and turned her face away from her brother’s. Around the table a mix of reactions looked back at her. Stiles was enraged where he sat beside Derek, that much he could tell from the waves of chemosignals coming off of him. Laura looked small and folded in on herself, one hand splayed across her middle where Derek remembered seeing wrent flesh only four years ago. Scott, though, was nodding as were Erica and Boyd.

“You all came back whole and undamaged, like nothing ever happened, but I didn’t. I spent six years paralyzed but aware, with all that trauma burning under the surface. When my body would allow me to sleep I would end up right back there in the basement listening to Milo screaming and I--” he shuddered, barely keeping a sob from escaping his lips, and then swallowed, “At first when I became able to move again I thought Laura could help. I scrawled spirals everywhere hoping she’d see it, asked my nurse to send them to her if she could track her down. I needed revenge, you don’t know how badly. Then she was here in the preserve and I could feel the power of the alpha spark and I knew it would be enough to end everyone who had ever harmed us and I just…it was so...”

Angela grabbed at his head with one hand and pulled it down to bury in her neck. He began to weep in earnest, and tears came to Talia’s eyes as well, shining but unshed.

“About a year ago we forced him onto antipsychotics,” Scott added, “as a condition of staying with the pack and staying protected. He’s caused a lot of damage, but so have I. So has Derek. So has just about everyone here. Beacon Hills was exceptionally rough for a long time and none of us handled it well.”

“I just…” Talia started, and then pressed her fingers to her lips. After a few minutes she continued, “I don’t know if I can be around you, Peter. For a while.”

Derek watched his mother stand, and stalk towards the front stairs, his father trailing behind with his shoulders hunched forward. The kitchen was quiet except for Peter’s crying, and Laura picking at her eggs. He certainly understood the anger, he’d carried it himself when he first buried her. He understood the resignation, too. But he also knew that after everything they couldn’t afford to fight amongst themselves. When Laura offered her hand across the table, Peter took it, and they all finished eating in silence.

 

***

 

Fabricating eleven new identities was easier than it probably should have been. They were able to continue using their old social security numbers, blessedly. The state and federal governments really seemed to talk to one another as little as possible, and their death certificates were only on record with the county. But locally speaking they were all dead, and couldn’t use their old names anymore. In many cases they couldn’t even use their old faces.

Laura took full advantage of the needed change and shaved half her head into an undercut. Tomas, her twin and Derek’s brother, mimicked the style in a more masculine length and they both took took to changing how they dressed and walked. Talia and Eric took Deaton up on his offer of cosmetic spells, reversing aging ten years each so they looked twenty years younger than anyone would expect the former matriarch and patriarch to be. Angela broke her nose and set it wrong so it would heal larger, more pronounced.

Erica watched the proceedings with vicious glee.

“So I have a question.”

Angela quirked an eyebrow from above the bandage she still held to the middle of her face.

“Are all werewolves such huge pain sluts? Because I kind of thought it was just a Derek thing, but for this plan to even occur to you...I mean, I have to assume there’s some predisposition.”

Peter glared from where he was rifling through the first aid kit. Milo was off to the side carefully covering every finger in neon colored bandages.

“Don’t say s-l-u-t in front of my child, you ingrate.”

“He can watch his mother take a hammer to her face, but can’t hear the word slut?”

He swiped a clawed hand at her but it was distracted, half his attention still on his wife, and Erica just laughed and ducked out of the way.

“Well, I think it worked beautifully. You look practically Grecian.”

“Oh, hush, you big smooth talker.”

He smiled, and swiped at the apples of her cheeks and along the bridge of her nose. The blood came off easily, still wet and bright against her skin, and as it went it gave way to the pale brown stains left by the iodine.

“You know we’ll have to get married again. Legally, I’m a bachelor.”

“Hmm, and what kind of wedding does _Marietta Leeds_ deserve, do you think? You set a high standard with the one you planned for _Angela Brandon_.”

“Well, you could always piggyback onto Boyd and I’s wedding,” Erica shrugged, “We were planning on involving the whole pack anyway, next full moon. Derek told us stories about how werewolves used to get married decades ago, with the pack all in a circle around them and biting a mark into each others’ wrist.”

Across the kitchen, Stiles’ eyebrows shot to his hairline and he stared at Peter with intensity hot enough to set his hair on fire. Peter manfully ignored his gaze and Derek just snorted.

“I suppose we could,” Angela said, “We got married the human way once, we can do it the wolf way the second time. It’ll be good. Symmetrical.”

“Yeah?” Peter smiled.

“Yeah.”

Once the blood was all cleaned away, and the twins were back from their turn at the DMV, Derek called the pack to dinner over the intercom. The trip to the grocery store, just Stiles and Scott since the Hales couldn’t risk too many outings just yet, had been an event. There had been a lot less meat on the list than expected--when asked Eric launched into a spiel about the high price of beef and the benefits of catching and cleaning your own fish--and in its place was countless bags of lentils, turtle beans,rice, and nuts. They’d cleaned the local WinCo’s bulk section out, as well as more than a dozen 10 gallon buckets to hold it all. It payed off that night, when the adults came together, led by Grandma Mera who conducted them all like a drill instructor, and made enough food to fill the impressive wooden table.

They said grace in a language the McCall pack largely didn’t recognize, and dug in.

“So, how many of you, altogether, are human?” Stiles mused.

Laura hummed, and tapped her fingers together as she counted.

“Dad is, and Grandma Mera, who’s mom’s mom. It’s pretty typical for Alphas to end up married to humans, although there’s no, like, law that says you have to. Angela used to be. And Tomas is too.”

“Wait, but...you’re twins,” Erica said.

“Yes.”

“But….you’re identical twins.”

Tomas hid a smirk behind his hand. Laura didn’t bother.

“Yes.”

“As in, the same.”

“Yes.”

“Oh my god,” Boyd groaned, “It’s magic. Does no one pay any attention to what goes on around here? It’s not genetic, they aren’t another species. Werewolves are humans affected by magic.”

“That doesn’t answer my question at all, though, why only one of them?” Erica swung her arms out and almost smacked her fiance in the nose before he caught her wrist.

Talia was smiling too then, and she shared a look with Derek. They were all more than used to Laura and Tomas taking every opportunity to be difficult, especially when it came to the quirks and intricacies of their shared nature. Twins were unique among wolves, stronger, more attuned to instinct. Finally Eric broke up the bickering with a loud clack of his mug against the table.

“Everyone is blessed differently. We don’t question the decisions of Mother Moon, why she makes one person human instead of wolf, or chooses to make some wolves alphas instead of betas,” he gestures broadly at Scott, at the head of the table, “The world is vast and complex. We’re always discovering new creatures, new magic, new gods. No one can ever know everything, so we just accept what we’re given and live for new experiences.”

“Speaking of new gods,” Talia grins broadly at her younger son, “When are we starting on the temple?”


End file.
